Paradox over the sea

The darkness of night, thick as grave soil, began to yield to a pale, sickly dawn. The mansion stood in silence... ruined silence. Blood ran like ink on ancient parchment, soaking its marble veins. The air was choked with the iron stench of murder. Shadows of guards loomed, whispering accusations to one another.

All eyes fell upon a single truth: Zon must have been the killer.

And yet... the true architect of this hellfire slipped away.

Veythor.

Silent as midnight's last breath.

He vanished into that fog-draped morning, unseen, unharmed,unchained. The guards who had drawn their blades and severed Kirean Zon's life had no idea that Veythor's silver tongue had guided their hands. Puppets. Pawns. And now the Chief Guard, a man sharpened by war but dulled by truth, would want answers... answers no one alive could give.

Somewhere in the alley of trees behind the mansion, Veythor shed his bloodstained armor, discarded the helmet that had hidden his smirk. He donned a cloak dark as void and pulled its hood low. That grin cruel and twisting bloomed across his face like roots wrapping around a coffin.

"Kirean Zon... What a fool. A blade of justice rusted by virtue. The finest detective of Narzan, now smeared across memory as a murderer—how laughable. How divine."

He chuckled... a hollow sound, echoing like a god laughing over a ruined temple.

The Chief Guard arrived at the crime scene, eyes narrowed in disbelief. There were too many questions, not enough corpses to answer them. But under Veythor's manipulation, the guards....numb from guilt...could only stammer half-truths. And so, a new story was born.

Kirean Zon: Slayer of the Prime Minister and his family.

A hero, now rewritten as a devil.

---

In the decaying streets of Kranel, Veythor walked among the broken.

A child. A girl. No older than nine.

She sat by the roadside like discarded trash. Her hands, raw and bleeding. Her eyes... lifeless. As if her soul had been chewed up by some beast in the night. When she looked up at Veythor, cloaked in shadow, she smiled.

Not in fear.

In relief.

To her, he was death... a reaper come to liberate her from this cruel existence. Her smile said it all: Thank you... for letting it end.

Veythor stopped.

He stared. Not at the child, but through her. His mind drifted again, into that cold, analytical realm that had kept him alive through slaughter and betrayal.

An escaped slave. Violently abused. A soul on the edge.

She was at the crossroads: to die, or to learn the cost of survival.

He reached into his cloak and threw a pouch of coins at her. It struck her face like a wake-up call from fate itself. Startled, she blinked... and saw not death, but man.

She ran. Clutching the money like her last heartbeat.

Behind her, Veythor spoke to the wind:

"The one who carves survival into their own flesh is greater than kings. The world doesn't care if you live or die... but if you live, let it be an insult to fate."

She didn't look back.

But she had heard.

And she understood.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest tragedy of all.

In the world of Thalvoria, currency was as much a weapon as a blade.

Three coins ruled the human realm Birham, forged from bronze, scraped the bottom of every pocket. Silham, cast in iron, held more weight, both in value and in power. Then came Gilham, a golden glimmer in the hands of the rich and the cruel.

But above them all, in whispered taverns and blood-bound contracts, was the rarest: Kisham.... a coin carved from the crimson crystal Kisin, found only deep in Thalvoria's cursed mines. Owning one was equal to owning fate itself.

Kisin is like diamond of our world but way more valuable than diamond.

---

With Zon's death, the house arrest order crumbled like ash. The soldiers outside his home dispersed like smoke in the wind.

From the shadows emerged a figure.....Veythor's doppelgänger. It walked with mechanical grace toward the true Veythor, who stood watching from a distance, the night cloaking his smirk.

He placed a hand on its shoulder.

"Good job. Now vanish."

And like a lie told too well... it disappeared.

Veythor returned home. The world slept, unaware of its quiet puppetmaster slipping through the door.

He ascended to his room. The silence there was deep, like a coffin. Exhaustion bit into him. He lit a cigarette, its smoke curling like memories. His eyes, crimson and hollow, stared into nothing.

Veythor slept

A sleep soaked in sins, wrapped in secrets.

The kind of sleep that only devils earn still,he slept soundly.

For years, guilt had never dared knock on his door.

But tonight... it did.

And it kicked the door open.

He awoke with a start.

Not from a noise.

Not from a nightmare.

But from a presence.

His eyes flicked open.... and the world was wrong. The ceiling was gone. So were the stone walls of his chamber in Thalvoria. The familiar weight of war, blood, and conspiracy had vanished.

Instead...

A throne? No...just a chair, carved from raw, ancient timber, perched impossibly high above a vast sea.

He looked around.

To the left: Earth.

Skyscrapers. Neon lights. People swarming like ants—hustling, shouting, laughing. Life.

And yet... not a single one looked up. Not a single one saw him. If they had, surely his image would've flooded every screen.

He was invisible.

Untouchable.

Unreal.

Veythor narrowed his crimson eyes.

"How the hell am I on Earth…? Have I been teleported? Did someone… kill me?"

But the silence around him was absolute. No wind. No sound. No answer.

And then—

A flicker.

Across from him, another chair materialized, floating mid-air. A man sat on it, legs crossed, head tilted, shrouded by the dim veil of storm clouds.

The moon fought its way through the sky like a dying candle in a dark abyss.

The clouds retreated.

And then... he saw the face.

Veythor's own face.

Exactly his. Down to the faint scar beneath the left eye. But the expression.... the smirk.... it was something else.

Mocking.

Knowing.

Like it had waited for this meeting for centuries.

Veythor's voice cracked through the void.

"What… what the fuck… this is me?"

The Other Veythor leaned forward slightly, lips curled into a cruel smile.

The silence between them thickened. The air grew heavy. Reality trembled.

Because this wasn't just a dream this was a reckoning.

Veythor quickly tried to stood up but only to realize that he can't move his any body parts from his shoulders down to his legs

Suddenly Second Veythor who was calmly sitting on the chair Spoke

Veythor why did you showed kindness to that girl why did you helped her why?why?why?why?

Veythor who was shocked suddenly became calm as ice and he laughed.... laughed like a mad man Veythor exhaled slowly. Then smirked.... a lifeless curl of the lips, like a corpse remembering it once lived.

"Kindness? No."

"That girl was a corpse pretending to breathe. Just another piece of trash thrown out by the world."

He leaned in, voice sharp and stripped of illusion.

"I helped her because it meant nothing."

"Because I could."

I only gave her a way to survival but how she survive is up to her fate is cruel and you can't predict what it do

The sea beneath groaned like a throat choking on its own truth.

"Her life wasn't spared. It was tossed a bone."

"And maybe, just maybe, that makes her remember that survival isn't free. That she owes the world nothing."

A pause.

"She's not special. She's not important. She is just me but from past…"

The Second Veythor chuckled a he asked a paradox this time.

"If kindness is a virtue... then tell me this"

"When a man saves a dying child not out of love, nor pity, nor reward.... but out of boredom... is that still kindness?"

"If a tyrant spares a city so that he may watch it rot slowly in poverty, rather than burn in flame... is that mercy?"

"If a monster shields a girl from death, knowing she will suffer more in life"

"...is that salvation... or cruelty wearing a smiling mask?"

"Tell me... when kindness is stripped of purpose, of morality, of soul"

"Is it still kindness... or just another form of power?"

"And if no one knows the difference... does the answer even matter?"

Veythor smiled, but there was no warmth in it only cold recognition. A man dissecting himself.He answered, not to justify, but to wound:

"You ask if it was kindness…"

"But kindness requires intention, doesn't it? Compassion. Empathy."

"I had none."

"She was a broken thing. Like I once was. A cracked mirror reflecting a version of myself I had long since buried."

"Perhaps I helped her to spit in the face of the Fate.... to say 'Look, even I can play your game of mercy.'"

"Perhaps I helped her because watching someone crawl out of the abyss… entertains me more than watching them fall."

"Or maybe… maybe I wanted to see if she would become like me."

"Not saved. But sharpened."

"So was it kindness?"

"No. It was cruelty, wearing a mask too tight."

"And the paradox?"

"If cruelty brings life, and kindness brings death, then what is truly kind? What is truly cruel?"

"The answer, my dear echo of me"

"...is that I no longer care."

He leaned back on the wooden throne above the sea, eyes reflecting nothing but red moonlight and ash.